Tiberius Gracchus / Gaius Gracchus
The Gracchi (bios and political programs) / Miscellaneous
Tiberius Gracchus:
There's a famous story about a fellow named Tiberius Gracchus. He was a Roman whose family was of plebeian origin, but had clearly integrated into the ranks of the elite and were allied in politics and marriage with the Scipiones. Journeying between Rome and Spain during Rome's wars to subdue Spain (he began serving in Spain in 137 BCE), young Tiberius noticed that there were no farmers working the fields in Italy, only slaves, working on the latifundia of magnates. And he said to himself, "no farmers, no soldiers - can this be good for Rome? I'd better start a political revolution on behalf of the little people." There's another story that Tiberius was furious with the senatorial elite (of whose ranks he was a card carrying member) after they rejected a treaty with the Spanish opposition to Roman rule that he had negotiated. After this experience he said "I'll show them!" or words to that effect. You decide.
Tiberius ran for and was elected to the office of tribune in 134. This magistracy had evolved during the conflict of the orders. It was designed to ensure that the plebs always had a voice speaking for their interests in government. Tribunes could promulgate and veto legislation and had the power to intervene to protect individual citizens. Practically speaking, the tribunes had long since been co-opted by the senatorial elite. Tiberius, however, used the office to propose radical land reform.
He remembered that legally the ager publicus belonged to the Roman state, not the individual landowners who leased it for their latifundia. Moreover, there was a law on the books which said that no one Roman could lease more than 500 iugera personally (an additional 500 acres was ok if you had 2 sons) (a iugera was about .6 acres) of the ager publicus. Tiberius proposed that a board of three commissioners be appointed to review the leases, remove excessive land holdings and redistribute them to landless citizens.
While the proposal was radical, it was constitutional and Tiberius in fact solicited support from leading Romans [he was, at least originally, a "within the system" kind of reformer]. The constitution, however, also permitted tribunes to veto proposed legislation, which is precisely what another tribune, M. Octavius, did. The powers that be could not forge a compromise and then Tiberius stopped working "within the system."
He proposed a new piece of legislation by which M. Octavius would be stripped of his office, and the land reform proposal passed. No one had ever tried to overturn an election of a magistrate. We're talking contra mos maiorum here in a major way. The bill passed, M. Octavius was deposed and the commission was established. And the senatorial elite was wildly angry. Tiberius' activity threatened them not merely economically, but also threatened their political control of the country. Tiberius had gone to the people, and the lowest common denominator of people at that, the landless, urban mob.
The board, which consisted of Tiberius, his brother Gaius, and his father-in-law, Appius Claudius Pulcher, began its work. The Senate (which constitutionally controlled the purse strings), however, refused to vote it funds that it needed to buy landholders out of their leases (an element of T. Gracchus' program). Meanwhile, King Attalus III of Pergumum, who had looked at what happened to the Greeks and Syrians in the first half of the century, took the novel step of leaving his country to Rome in his will. Because Pergumum, besides being a great place to spend time (great climate, great culture - think San Francisco), had silver mines and was a good grain producing region, this inheritance was worth a lot of money to the Romans. Attalus conveniently died in 133 BCE, at the moment when the Senate was starving the land commission of funds. As it happened, the Roman patron of Pergamum, was Tiberius' father.
Tiberius then proposed a law to the plebs that would fund the agrarian commission with funds from the inheritence of Pergumum. From a mos maiorum point of view, this was a direct attack on the Senate, which had traditionally made all foreign policy and domestic budget decisions. Tiberius' enemies began to charge that he had ambitions to be a rex - the vilest political slander one could suffer in Rome (remember Cicero's problems after he ordered the execution of the Catilinarians?), and threatened to prosecute him the minute he left office. Tiberius responded by announcing he would seek re-election as tribune. Although Roman law did not seem to explicitly forbid this move, no one had ever attempted such a thing before.
The sources for what happened on election day conflict but both suggest that the election convened and then postponed. The next day, Tiberius and his men seized the Capitol (where elections were held), forced out tribunes who disagreed with him (and could have vetoed the assembly) and got himself re-elected. This was definitely contra mos maiorum. Meanwhile, the Senate was meeting at the Temple of Fides. P. Scipio Nasica urged the consul to declare a state of emergency and do whatever was necessary to stop Tiberius. Nasica, who was a hero of the battle of Pydna, the Pontifex Maximus, and Tiberius' cousin (although the two sides of the family had been at odds with each other politically). Unfortunately for Scipio Nascia, the consul, Scaevola, was a lawyer. He said all his responses to Tiberius would be through the Roman legal system - which meant it would take a long time (courts weren't all that different then). Nascia, who was the Pontifex Maximus, then turned to the Senate and told his colleagues he was going to go save the Republic, and they were welcome to join him. A mob of Senators climbed the Capitoline hill and a riot ensued. Tiberius was the first to die. After the dust settled, the victorious senators dumped the bodies of the dead into the Tiber. This was big time contra mos maiorum. The body of a tribune, by law, was sacrosanct (it was illegal to touch a tribune without permission; killing one was definitely beyond the bounds). The whole constitutional point of the tribunate was to have magistrates who could protect the interests of the plebs without fear for their lives. It was precisely this constitutional crisis that Scaevola had wanted to avoid.
Romans of every political stripe were profoundly upset by the events of Tiberius' tribunate. The Senate believed that Tiberius had directly challenged the constitutional order of Rome, and their place in it. Ordinary folks were probably appalled that members of the ruling class had resorted to violence in their internal political struggle. They were appalled that a tribune, clearly acting in their interests, had been murdered. They also wanted their farms. Even members of the aristocracy had less problems with the agrarian reforms per se than with what they thought were Tiberius' unconstitutional methods.
The Senate bundled Nasica off to Pergumum on a diplomatic mission, and, interestingly enough, continued the work of Tiberius' commission. In 132, the anti-Gracchan forces began a systematic campaign to drive Tiberius' allies into exile. The did so by extending indefinitely, in a constitutionally unprecedented way, the right of consuls to order a one year exile of any Roman citizen. An uneasy quiet settled over Rome's domestic politics for the next decade. The peace was shattered when Tiberius' younger brother Gaius rose to political prominence.
Gaius began his political career by winning an election for a quaestorship in 126 (term of office beginning in 125). The sources tell us that enemies of the Gracchi tried to block his advancement with frivolous lawsuits. Unfortunately for them, Gaius was a brilliant orator (probably one of the greatest in Roman history). He made mincemeat of his opponents and was elected tribune in 122 BCE. The sources also suggest that Gaius knew that he was risking his life by continuing his brother's program of agrarian reform. This may be a tad romanticized (but think of the Kennedy family).
While Tiberius sought agrarian reform, and only attacked the Senatorial stranglehold on political power in Rome as a means to obtain this end, Gaius began his political life with a full-fledged program for political reform (of which land reform was only one component). He also wanted to avenge his brother. Given his legacy, his oratorical skills, and the latent affection of ordinary Romans for efforts Tiberius had made on their behalf, he posed an extremely serious threat to the senatorial elite.
Gaius first proposed a law that would have made ineligible for any further political office, anyone whom the People had removed from office. Only one man in Rome fit this bill (M. Octavius, the tribune Tiberius had removed). However, Gaius abandoned the proposed law, saying his mother, Cornelia, had interceded on behalf of Octavius. Perhaps unlikely. The move, however, clearly signalled that he intended to pursue his enemies vigorously.
Gaius' next move was to propose a law that would make it illegal to exile any Roman without a trial before the people and to retroactively make illegal the activities of the consuls of 132 who had driven Tiberius' friends into exile. The law passed, and Gaius' greatest opponents immediately left Rome. He then proposed his political reforms.
He first sought to reform the courts. He, through his ally the tribune Acilius, proposed an extortion law (the "lex Acilia") that would permit the prosecution of provincial governors (and other Roman magistrates in the provinces) for receiving more money than a specified limit (the amount of which we don't know). More importantly, Gaius proposed that the juries who served in courts hearing these cases would consist of equites. Traditionally, only Senators had served on Roman juries, and as Roman equites whom the Senators had shamelessly shaken down in the provinces had come to learn, the Senators never convicted one of their own. Although equite jurors came from the same social and economic class as the senatorial elite, their economic interests had begun to diverge as Rome acquired its overseas empire. Gaius also introduced other legislation that would benefit equites at the expense of the senatorial elite. His acts were a critical step in the development of a class identity among equites. Control of the juries would continue to be a contested point in Roman politics throughout the revolution. As importantly, Gaius was clearly trying to be a better politician than his brother had, and acquire a broader base of support for the reforms he proposed.
Gaius' agrarian reforms continued his brothers' policies and proposed a scheme for the establishment of colonies which would provide resettlement opportunites for the landless urban poor. He also passed laws requiring the Senate to reform its military recruitment practices (which had become incredibly oppressive under the manpower requirements of the expanding empire). He also instituted a program which required the government to guarantee a maximum grain price. This meant that urban citizens wouldn't be ruined by fluctuations (inevitable and manufactured) in the price of imported grain (since going to latifundia, Rome had become dependent on imported grain) [cf. heating oil prices in the Northeast every winter]. Although Gaius' initial plan eventually grew into a simply grain dole, his goal was not free distribution of corn, but rather a regime of price ceilings within which the free market could operate.
Gaius then sought and easily won re-election as tribune. Suprisingly enough, the senatorial elite did not oppose his effort on constitutional grounds (as they had his brother's). Gaius' goal in his second tribunate was to extend Roman citizenship to the Italian allies (folks who had been living with various degrees of Roman legal and political rights under treaties dating from the 5th century). Now, Gaius' opponents struck back. The began a concerted campaign against the extension of citizenship, arguing to the plebs that this law would dilute the value of their own citizenship. Furthermore, they, through the tribune M. Livius Drusus, offered a program of even great colonization than Gaius had (cf. the inflationary effect in American political debates on tax cut plans). Drusus was so successful that Gaius' bill failed to win the support of the plebs. When Gaius ran for re-election as a tribune (it would have been for the third time), he lost. Worse yet, from Gaius' point of view, a fierce opponent of extension of the citizenship, L. Opimius, won election as consul that year.
Under Opimius, the Senate set out to overturn all Gaius' legislation. The prestige (dignitas) of Gaius was at an all time low. On a morning when a vote was set to overturn some of his legislation establishing colonies, Gaius and his supporters took possession of the voting place. A tribune rather gratuitously insulted them and a riot ensued in which the tribune was killed. The Senate demanded an explanation and the Gracchans fled to the Aventine hill (the traditional rallying point for the plebs). Opimius then got the Senate to pass a decree ordering the consul to see to it "that the Republic suffer no harm." This type of decree came to be known as a senatus consultum ultimum (the final decree of the Senate). Its constitutionality was always a hotly debated matter (Opimius was the first to use it). For those who believed it was a constitutionally valid act, it was the equivalent of martial law (cf. Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus during the American Civil War). For those who did not accept its constitutional validity, it was a license to the Senatorial elite to kill their enemies. Cicero later used a senatus consultum ultimum [SCU] to justify his execution of the Catilinarians without trial. While his arguments prevailed at the execution, within a few years he was driven into exile on the grounds that his act had been unconstitutional.
Using the authority of the SCU, Opimius ordered a general who just happened to be waiting on the Campus Martius for his triumph, to attack the Gracchans on the Aventine. It was slaughter. Gaius escaped, but committed suicide the next day. One source claims that Opimius announced he would pay its weight in gold for the head of Gaius Gracchus. The fellow who found it supposedly poured lead into it to increase his reward. Opimius didn't care. The next year, Opimius was tried and acquitted for his role in the affair. He went on to build the Temple of Concord.
The consequences of the failure of the Gracchan revolution were profound and manifold. Rome, for example, merely deferred the problem of extension of the citizenship, and actually had to fight the Social War over it a generation later. In order to win the war, they had to grant Roman citizenship to their allies as Gaius had proposed. Similarly, Rome's pressing problem of the landless urban poor remained unsolved. As importantly, a cleavage developed within the senatorial elite. Those who would defend Senatorial privilege (and what they claimed was the mos maiorum) who came to be called the optimates (the best people), flush with their victory over the Gracchi, became entrenched and unwilling to compromise on the pressing social issues that faced Rome. Conversely, those who wished to battle with the powers that be (whether for ideological reasons, or simply in an effort to gain personal power) now had martyrs and a name, populares (the People's party). While the populares (themselves members of the political elite) frequently were less than committed to the cause of Roman social reform for its own sake, they now had a weapon to use in their struggles for power in the Senate - an appeal to the people. A good portion of the rank and file citizenry had come to distrust the optimates and to regard the Gracchi as men who had died for their sake. Finally, the equites came to recognize their own identity as a class with interests distinct from those of the senatorial elite in Rome.
The Gracchi:
primary sources on Tiberius Gracchus: / Plutarch's bio of Tiberius Gracchus
history of T. Gracchus' political career/activity / The tribunate of T. Gracchus
the career of Gaius Gracchus / Gaius' political program / the Brothers Gracchi
Plutarch's bio of Gaius Gracchus / Appian on the Gracchi
The Roman Revolution, beginning with the Gracchi / The Results of the Wars of Expansion
Urban Life in Rome / Roman Empire and Dictatorship
A "player's" list for the Gracchan revolution
Other:
gallery of pictures of ruins of Pergamum / a glossary of terms for Roman land measurement
gallery of pictures of Capitoline
the Roman concepts of fides and virtus
Roma
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Description / Course
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/ Week 5, Class 2
Lecture / Week
1 Class 3 Lecture / Imber's
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